She Cries
by daysofinspirationx
Summary: [Songfic] Sometimes it's easier to pretend then risk waking up alone. BennyMaureen drabble Oneshot


Song: She Cries from Songs for a New World

Disclaimer: Song is Jason Robert Brown's, characters are JLar's, wasted time is mine

**Bold are lyrics.**

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I have found heaven on Earth, and I've found hell on Earth. Strange enough, they're the same person.

**T****here's**** a couple of things I've learned**

**O****n the many roads I've taken**

**Flames are not what gets you burned**

**It's the cold and the ice**

"Benny?" she hissed.

"Mhm?" I mumbled, not even looking up from behind The Village Voice. I didn't need to. I already knew she was standing there with her hands on her hips, disheveled in that 3 AM, New-York-City-beautiful kind of way that she created for herself.

"I haven't been home for three days. Can't you at least _pretend_ you're happy to see me?"

"I am happy." I insisted, sipping stale coffee that was part of Mark's secret stash.

"I got a bigger hello from _Roger_," she heaved dramatically.

"That_ is_ bad." I complied and finally dropped the paper. I watched the anger fall from her face, like her curls were falling around her cheekbones.

"I hope you missed me more then Roger did," she whispered breathily into my ear as I let her slide onto my lap. And I took her in, my arms around her slender back as I pretended she didn't smell like other men.

**Here's a piece of advice**

**I got from a little bird**

**The flames can get you stirred**

**But it's the cold that leaves you shake****n**

"Mark, I think we need to make this a weekly endeavor for us." Her voice ricocheted off the loft walls the moment she stepped in, immediately filling the empty space.

I turned to the pair stumbling in the door from my spot on the couch besides Roger, never fast enough to seem like I was waiting for her.

"Wednesday night is dancing night!" She exclaimed triumphantly, throwing her bag on the counter. She was fizzling with excitement in her red dress that hugged her curves, red deep like her fingernails.

"Maureen, some people have jobs." Mark sighed, hanging up his coat. Roger and I rolled our eyes like it was choreographed, because Mark could never turn down Maureen and we took pleasure in watching him try.

She slithered up to Mark in that too-red, too-devil dress and whispered, "Not in Bohemia."

And then she turned to me, "Hey, baby."

At the time, I grumbled and felt Roger smirk at me. But when I recall it now, I know I'd take that back any day. Because back then, at least she turned to me at all.

**I don't like to philosophize**

**I just want to tell a story**

"Benny?" Roger turned to me with that cocky half-smirk one morning as Maureen pranced out the loft door.

"Yeah."

"You're easily the densest man on the face of the Earth."

My eyes flickered up to Roger in disbelief. "Oh really? Enlighten me, wise one."

"Well," he crooned, pulling his legs beneath him. "If you can't see Maureen is clearly out screwing anything that moves while your back is turned, your vision's worse then Mark's."

I shook my head as I felt the knife twist in my chest. "Who says my back is turned?"

I stood quickly and sauntered out to the fire escape, leaving Roger with that cocky smirk fading fast.

**Always leave when a woman cries **

**Never look in a woman's eyes **

**You'll**** get stuck with a high and rising fever **

**And then you can't leave her**

Shafts of orange-pink light fell across my yellowed pages. My eyes focused and refocused in my head when I looked up from me and Mark's latest screenplay dirt, and they quickly found Maureen sitting on the window bench. The loft was drowning in afternoon glow, and I saw the corners of the room turning deeper shades of orange in front of my eyes.

Maureen would always sit and watch the sunset from the Peter Pan window and how it made the city almost seem beautiful. But I watched it because of the other things it made beautiful.

I slowly slid in beside her as the melting-popsicle sunset heightened. Anything can be breathtaking with the right lighting. Mark used to say that. He was right.

What Mark didn't say was that some things didn't need lighting at all to be breathtaking.

Maureen turned to me slowly with a tear-stained face, due to what I never asked, and as the sun sunk lower her eyes turned the deepest shade of twinkling hazel, like the reflection of an evergreen forest in her head.

Some how she knew my arms would be open, and she leaned into me as the sky exploded. Every day I watched the world go through a rebirth as the sun disappeared, and I figure I went through my own. Because every day I woke up and Maureen was still beside me, reeking of cologne I didn't recognize but with those same evergreen forest eyes against white sheets.

**Please, don't wait man**

**It's almost too late man**

**She cries and you want to hold her**

**She lies and you want to run away**

**But just give her a minute**

**I promise you're in it to stay**

"You know what I think?" Collins whispered over his morning tea, his eyes whisking over to Maureen.

"What?" I asked, because Collins always seemed to know the answers.

"I think if she gives you one thousand reasons to leave, you need to find the one she gives you to stay." I glanced over to Maureen across the loft who seemed miles away, practicing the choreography for her latest performance with her secondhand stereo. Her skin glistened with sweat and somewhere in the middle of counting her steps and mouthing her words, she looked up to me and stopped all counting and smiled, as if anything she'd need to know was written right in my eyes. And I figured that was reason enough.

**She smiles and you'll stay forever **

**She screams **

**Well, that's the price you pay **

**But there's no one can make you **

**Forget how you feel **

**For all she can take **

**You've got more there to steal **

**So you don't mind a bit of surprise **

**And she cries**

"Maureen, I can't believe you dragged me out here." I snarled at her.

"C'mon Benny," she tugged on my arm like an overly excited child. "You know you love it when it snows."

"Now when it's minus 15 degrees."

"It's actually 28 degrees, Mr. Negative." She rolled her eyes but giggled and I couldn't help but give in to her charms. I watched our shoes make tracks in the snow at our feet, each step beside each other, never straying.

When I looked up again at the people around us, I watched jaws drop and men gape as Maureen strolled past. Despite my earlier protests, I wrapped my arm around her possessively and took pleasure in the fact that even if she was out of sight by 11, for the moment this beautiful goddess was mine.

**I don't like to admit I'm wrong**

**I believe in guts and glory**

"Maureen," I sneered up at her over Mark's latest scene. "Can you stop that excessive tapping?"

She smiled coyly and dropped the pencil laced between her knuckles. "Your wish is my command."

"Thank you." I heaved. "Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?"

"Hounding me. Is there something you want, because I could be much more productive if you'd just ask already?" She rolled her eyes, never flinching when I used this tone with her, a trait that made me cringe. She was sitting on top of the metal table, her leg dangling and swinging idly, leaning over me as I read.

"Nope." She declared with child's eyes. I shook my head and went back to the pages, Maureen not moving an inch.

"That won't work."

I gushed out air, swiping my tongue across my teeth. "_What_ won't work?"

"This." She pointed to a portion of the scene. "It's so out of character."

I snorted and decided to humor her. "How, Maureen?"

"Well," she started, always ready to discharge her opinion, "Jason wouldn't have stormed out on Rebecca."

"Really?" I looked up at her in disbelief. "Did you ask him?"

Her eyes were slits. "Benny, don't be an asshole."

"Rebecca cheats on him."

"Oh, I know." Maureen's eyes flittered down to the pages. "But who says that it's reason enough for Jason to go? You know why he'd stay?"

"No Maureen, why?"

"He knows there's nothing worth leaving for."

She hopped off the table and ambled off, leaving me to pretend a thousand scars weren't bursting at the seams at that very moment.

**But it's time I should change my song **

**I've been here just a bit too long**

**Always thought I was much too strong for hat****ing**

**And still I keep waiting**

**And while I'm resolving**

**That door keeps revolving**

There were some things about the loft that were so comfortably familiar. Like Roger sneaking in at 4 AM, his boyish tones matched by husky feminine giggles. Awkward footsteps with passionate gasps to his bedroom, the slight click of the lock when his door closed.

The walls were paper thin, so nothing was left to the imagination.

These nights I'd stay up and contemplate, long after Maureen had fallen into sleep. I'd watch her chest rise and fall and listen to Roger's fervent moans through the walls. I tried to pinpoint what was appealing about these late night escapades, what made Roger and Maureen flock to them. A few hours of frenzy, of chaos, of confusion, of passion without definition, and then breathing slowing and morning light soaked with regret in tangled sheets.

But maybe that was what they wanted, I had started to realize. To have a few hours without a ball and chain, to live in the beauty of the coming together and never having to answer why.

I looked over at Maureen, and the crease in her forehead and her sweet breathing. And I couldn't imagine why anyone would chase after that just to wake up alone.

**She cries and you want to hold her**

**She lies and you're halfway out the door**

**But you never can do it**

**She'll make you go through it once more**

It's funny how long it takes to supply yourself with all the heated words you need, and how quickly they can fade into the recesses of your mind.

I entered the loft weighed down with anger, until my eyes met Maureen curled into a ball on the couch, sobs leaking into the air.

Mark was beside her, their hands laced as he looked down at her with so much compassion it hurt.

"Maureen?" I asked, my hate deflating like a punctured balloon. Mark's eyes met mine and he just shook his head, at a loss. Maureen lifted her head slowly, and I surveyed her face marked with vulnerability, how her mascara ran in all the right places and how painfully beautiful she still remained. My high and mighty, do-or-die Maureen, and her tear-stained face and eyes that held too much.

Mark stood and touched my shoulder as he passed, grabbing his coat and heading straight for the door.

"Benny," she whimpered and I felt all my defenses crumble.

"Yes?"

"Collins is dying." And every lie she ever told vanished in thin air as I sat beside her and clutched her tight, a new round of tears staining my shirt and her heaving chest in mine.

The last thing I remember thinking before we fell together again was to remember to unpack whatever I had gotten into my suitcase.

**She smiles and you'll stay forever **

**She sings**

**Oh, she's got you now for sure**

"You guys do know it's February, right?"

Mark and I shivered the moment we reached the roof, Maureen and Roger looking up from his guitar as if they were invincible to the wind gutting us all from the inside out.

"Is it?" Roger smirked.

"Benny, listen to this!" Maureen squealed. "Play it Roger, play it!"

"New material?" Mark asked, sitting in an old plastic lawn chair beside Roger and Maureen.

"A duet!"

"You don't seem like a duet sort of guy, Roger." I crossed my arms against the cold.

He grinned. "First time for everything." He started strumming his guitar, hitting a few strong, infectious chords. The way his music always started – making you want to dive right inside him.

"Join me?" Roger asked.

"Oh, no." I assured them. "Tone deaf."

He shrugged. "Take the lead, Maureen." Which she did, gladly. Her voice soared, mingling with his choppy chords in the bitter air. Her tones, smooth and sweet and gliding and free, and all I could do was smile because nothing was worth more then this.

_Don't tell me what my sins are,_

_I think I'd rather not know..._

**And each time that you swear **

**That you will not give in **

**She'll throw you a stare **

**That'll show you can't win **

**It's amazing how hard each man tries **

**But she cries**

"Damnit Benny, you are the most stubborn, arrogant -"

"Oh, so the minute I divulge a bit of your imperfection I -"

"Hey!" Maureen and I whipped our heads towards Roger's open door. "You wanna keep the shouting match down? It's 4 AM!"

Finally we agreed on something. "NO!"

"What the hell are you arguing about?" Mark hollered from some distant room.

Both of our eyes fell to the floor.

"They can't remember." Roger sneered. "As usual." He slammed the door behind him.

"What are we fighting over?" Maureen finally asked in softer tones.

"God, I don't know." I massaged my temples with my fingertips, frustration leaking from my pores. "Maureen, I can't do this anymore. Really, I -"

"You're a liar, you know that?"

"What?" I whipped around to face her.

"Walk out this door." She got in my face. "Walk out the door right now and prove me wrong."

I didn't get up.

"I dare you." She seethed through clenched teeth.

I just shook my head and bit my inner lip until I felt it bleed.

She crossed her arms at her chest and shot daggers with her eyes; that all-knowing stare I'd come to hate.

"I thought so."

**All of a sudden **

**You**** fall for her charms **

**You promise you'll stop all her tears**

"Do you remember the first night we met?"

She smiled up at me, and I swear there were as many stars in her pupils as there were in the sky.

"Yes. And every after." She had made her way onto my lap, and my fingers were twirling the silver band around her finger.

It had been here that we had met. Around this bench in Bryant Park. Maureen would always drag me here to look at the stars at night, or to watch young lovers during the day. This bench was ours, this little corner of the universe and little strip of time reserved for us. Our names were written in this sky.

"Tell me what we'll be." She cooed, her breath like French silk on my skin. A young, slightly more naïve, slightly more gullible Maureen looked up at me, a honey-slow grin making its way across her face and I knew there was no other choice but to make a few promises.

"We'll be everything."

To this day, I don't know why I promised her that. But whenever I did, her eyes lit up in this way I'd tell a thousand lies to see again.

They still do. But it's no longer for me.

**All of sudden **

**She's back in your arms **

**And**** the walls start closing **

**And blocking out the light **

**And changing all your dreams **

**And right before your eyes**

"Mark, she's suffocating me."

His eyes widened in confusion. "Benny, you're not making any sense."

I slammed my fist on the table. "I used to have all these aspirations. Writing plays and running workshops and finding raw talent…"

"We still do that." Mark insisted, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Except for the whole running them and casting people thing." He added pointedly.

I rolled my eyes. "But it's like none of it matters! She's in the room, and the only things I can ever hope to be are the things she chooses!"

Mark leaned forward. "Something tells me it's not supposed to be that way."

"No shit," I scoffed. I hunched over and hid my face in my hands.

"Benny, if she's making you choose, choose the door." Mark, with his soothing voice and his calm eyes. Mark , who lived in a world of black and white. Mark, who had a child's mind that said if you're happy you stay, if you're not you leave.

I lifted my head and looked at him with the most compassion I ever had; what I would have given for it to make sense like it did for him. "If only you knew, Mark."

He soon would.

**She cries **

**And**** I don't know the answer **

**She spies **

**And there's no place I can hide**

A sobbing Maureen clung to me in the green-blue night, our bodies the only source of heat. I timed my chest to rise and fall with hers, trying to steady her, to give her a rhythm.

It wasn't an unusual occurrence, Maureen bursting into tears over factors in her life of which she had no control. That may have been the reason in itself. But I'd always hold her, always let her cry until the morning sun poked through the blinds, always pretended I could understand when there were so many things I still could never figure out about why she was.

"Benny," she moaned. "Don't you ever get the feeling your life is supposed to be something more then it is? That you're your own worst obstacle?"

She ducked her head again, and I'm glad she didn't see my eyes as they snapped to life in comprehension. I sighed slowly and felt everything ache and I knew I could only hold her for so long, could only lie for so many days. I wondered how long I'd be my own roadblock, how long she'd be the road itself.

"Yeah." I whispered in the twilight, almost shocked to hear myself admit it out loud. "I do."

**When I look in the mirror**

**There's**** nothing but fear here inside **

**I run **

**And still she is right behind me**

**I fall **

**The chasm is too wide**

There was something relieving about Boston, the tension receding and the colors dimming into softer shades. There was something relieving about being anywhere but the city, where nothing made sense and everything was clear all at the same time. I had gone up to Boston a few days earlier to follow behind Collins and give myself a new kind of air, a new atmosphere to breathe in.

He had just ducked out of the 11 o'clock philosophy class he was teaching, and I met him on the quad as we walked to his favorite coffee house. We were silent today; he was obviously going through tomorrow's lesson plan in his head and I was using all the energy I had to focus on the orange and red sea at my feet.

"Benny?" I heard his voice over the crunching of leaves beneath me.

"Yeah?"

"You know you gotta go home eventually, right?"

I exhaled this new air. Still just as difficult to breathe. "Yeah, I know." My eyes flickered up to the lake a few yards away and I watched a woman with her feet in the water. She had those high cheekbones, those wild tendrils, those stained red lips, and my eyes widened and I felt my chest constrict, but never in a way I could classify as bad.

"You see her everywhere, don't you?"

I blinked, and the image disappeared. A woman remained, but not mine.

"How'd you know?" I asked him.

Collins chuckled in that all-knowing way, as if he held all universal truths. We stopped at a bench and he tied his shoe. "That's the thing about running away," he declared as he stood, leaning a massive palm on my shoulder. "Doesn't work when there's something you should be running towards instead."

**So I'm stuck in this world of her magic mystique **

**Where**** I'll never be more than her toy of the week**

I kept my eyes peeled for Maureen in the crowded lobby. A single rose was tucked in my hand, hidden behind my back. Voices chattered over me, but I knew the minute she walked out she'd be the only one in the room. Just how she always was.

Maureen had invited me to see her latest performance, and as expected she had been incredible. Not that anyone would tell her otherwise. But strange enough, Maureen seemed more comfortable jumping into the skins of other people then being in her own. I think they call that hiding.

I felt a sheer sense of pride in being here simply because she asked me, her one and only for the hour, her knight in shining armor.

I saw her make her way out of the dressing room, changed into her street clothes but with her hair still piled on her head, drooping slightly now in its typical after-show-style, her stage makeup still on her face to make her look like a porcelain doll. Something you did not touch, but only admired its beauty.

I stepped forward to meet her, but before I could get to her another man was wrapping her in an embrace and tucking a bouquet of red roses into her arms as she squealed with delight.

I was never one to swallow my pride, so before I could count my steps I was facing the wind with my hands jammed in my pockets, the rose snapped in half and back on the theatre lobby's floor.

**But each time I prepare my goodbyes **

**Well****, she catches me looking **

**And she opens the floodgates**

"Where's Roger?" Maureen asked, breaking our kiss.

"Out." My lips found hers.

"And Mark?" She broke it again.

"Out." I went in again.

"Collins?" Again.

"Out." I stopped listening and dove for her and she wiggled out from under me.

"Nice try, he's been gone for months!" She giggled as I tickled her, trying to go in to pick up from where we left off. But she just smiled coyly and found her way into my lap as we sat on the cold wood floor. She leaned against my chest and I ran my fingers through her hair, silently praying for a couple thousand lifetimes to spend just like this.

"Benny?" She asked.

"Yes?"

"Do you ever wonder what it's like to be in love?"

She didn't look up as she said it. That was the moment I realized I had lost my paradise, my hell-and-heaven on Earth. I knew right then that I had lost my opportunity to leave with any shred of dignity; I was going to leave, and it was going to be on her terms.

Just how it always was.

Just how it always will be.

**And she cries..**


End file.
